Children's Books: Early Readers

Helen Brown on a sparkling collection of books for early readers,
including sassy princesses, snotty footballers, terrified ghosts and a new
Mr Gum

By Helen Brown

6:20AM BST 26 Jul 2010

On a “glorious, give-me-morious, start-of-the-storious spring morning”, in a forest where the woodpeckers peck and the wouldn’tpeckers don’t, while dandelions chase dandezebras through the grass, stands a cherry tree whose branches are flung out like the arms “of a rejoicing priest who’s just discovered God hiding in his garage”. But Polly (the only person with any brains in her village) suspects that lurking behind this tree is a stinky old man who hates children, animals and corn on the cob. Yes: it’s Mr Gum.

Mr Gum and the Cherry Tree(Egmont, £5.99) is the seventh of Andy Stanton’s gleeful books featuring the master scoundrel. This time the old grimster has convinced the gullible folk of Lamonic Bibber that he’s the king of the woodland spirits and is owed all manner of tributes – from snacks to fancy Italian loafers. Can Polly bring her neighbours to their senses? Stanton loves language the way a freshly bathed dog loves mud – he rolls around in it with a naughty, madcap joy. Parents will recognise the influence of Spike Milligan, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. Children will just wriggle and squeal until you suspect they’ve consumed more than their recommended quota of invertebrates.

For more gentle, but often equally surreal language, little people should sit cross-legged on the carpet with a copy of Chrissie Gittins’s latest poetry collection, The Humpback’s Wail(Rabbit Hole, £5.99). As a poet who regularly visits schools, award-winning Gittins knows how to help children let their imaginations wander. For example, in "Night Sky in the Clun Valley", she'll point out that “the sky is throwing out woks, the moon is munching bananas, and the stars wear sparkly socks”.

If you struggle to keep your little ones on the carpet (let alone sitting still), then you may be able to win them over with one of this summer’s football-related reads. There’s Sophie Smiley’s Football Fever (Andersen, £5.99) in which Charlie and her brothers are given red cards by their mother for bad table manners; the snort-inducingly gloopy Super Soccer Boy and the Snot Monsters (Piccadilly, £4.99) by Judy Brown; and the latest in Keith Brumpton’s rather sweet Dino FC series, Terror on the Training Ground (Usborne, £4.99), which mixes comic strips with the text.

Elsewhere, a young royal finds himself sent off in the first of S J Harris’s funny and warm-hearted new series about Prince Jasper the Unhelpful (Tick Tock, £4.99). When he causes pandemonium in the castle by advising the staff on the best ways to go about their duties, the King and Queen suggest he embark on a quest to rescue a princess from a neighbouring tower. But sassy Princess Miranda has other ideas. She’s writing a book (“What it’s Really Like to be a Beautiful Princess: Warts and All”) and doesn’t take kindly to Jasper’s overzealous interruptions.

The thoughtless “still-alives” keep interrupting the lives of the charmingly quirky ghosts in the latest book from Nestlé Gold Award-winning author Daren King. The Frightfully Friendly Ghosties (Quercus, £5.99) do their best to get along with the people who share their home, but they can’t all pass through walls and when poor Pamela Fraidy gets locked in the attic with a leggy spider, they must call in a professional ghoul to exorcise the still-alives. I loved all the ghosties’ beautifully sketched characteristics, and the sensitive way in which King’s story helps children to understand fear: a “wibbly feeling” in the tummy.

Finally, the hero of Steve Voake’s appealingly streetwise caper, Hooey Higgins and the Shark (Walker, £3.99) also finds himself with a wibbly tummy when his older brother convinces him to wade out to sea and empty a bottle of ketchup into the water to attract a shark. “Relax,” Will tells him, “when was the last time you heard of someone with ketchup getting their head bitten off by a shark?” Although Hooey doesn’t get decapitated, he does get in a pickle in Shrimpton-on-Sea’s lingerie store.